'Don't worry about the cost; that's Bishop's and the Minister's concern. Charlie, how about you?'

'We're making slow ...'

McEvoy's phone rang. He held up his hand to stop Deegan. 'McEvoy?'

'Colm, you'd better come back up again,' the AC said. 'We need to talk.'

'I'll be there now.' The line went dead. 'Right, okay,' he said to the room, 'I'll be back shortly. Get a coffee or something.'

The AC was standing at the window looking out across the city. Bishop was sitting in the same seat as before, a scowl on his face. The clock on the wall said it was a ten past seven. The murder that morning seemed a lifetime ago. McEvoy hovered, unsure whether to sit or not.

'Take a seat, Colm,' the AC instructed, turning and sitting behind his desk. 'The last hour has, let's say, been interesting. I've spent most of it on the phone, first with the Commissioner, then with the Minister, then with his Secretary General, then back to the Minister, and finally the Commissioner again. Basically Justice has shoved the ball back into our court and have gone to talk to the Attorney General for advice.

'They think we're screwed either way and don't want any part of it. They think we should do whatever we think's best. Unless the Attorney General says otherwise, the decision about how to proceed then is up to us. They don't think a security alert, however, is a good idea. There's enough panic around as it is without people thinking they've got to worry about bombs as well. They've no objections to closing the street to traffic, however.'

The AC paused, gathering his thoughts.

'As you know, I've also spoken to Kathy Jacobs. Based on her experience and her reading of the case notes, she's strongly of the opinion that whether we close O'Connell Street or not, he's going to kill the seventh victim tomorrow. On that basis, it seems to make sense to keep O'Connell Street open and to catch the bastard.'

McEvoy let a deep breath out unaware that he'd been holding it.

'There's still the danger that he might kill someone before we can stop him, but at least he'd be caught. And while the press might crucify us if that happens, they'd vilify us if he killed elsewhere and they then found out we'd the perfect opportunity to catch him and passed it up. What that means is we need to make sure we do catch him. I know you're not happy about this, Tony, but I really don't think we've got a choice.'

Bishop nodded and lowered his eyes to the desk.

'We've got less than five hours until tomorrow starts, so the clock has started ticking. I'll leave the operational planning to you two,' the AC said, thereby devolving himself of responsibility, 'but my feeling is that you keep the team small. No more than 30 men maybe two teams of 15. It's imperative that whoever's involved keeps everything to themselves, okay? Nobody's to tell their families to stay away from O'Connell Street. The news will travel like wildfire and God knows what that'll start. I know they won't want to put loved ones at risk, but under no circumstances are they to mention the operation. Is that clear?'

McEvoy and Bishop nodded their heads.

'If you want an armed response unit or anything else, just let me know. My suggestion is you hand pick your teams, starting with your DIs and DSs. People with experience. People you can rely on. Right, well,' he said, drawing things to a close, 'I guess, you'd better go and make a start. If I hear anything from the Minister or Attorney General I'll let you know.'

'Do you want us to run the final plan past you?' Bishop asked, already knowing the answer.

'Only if it's going to involve anything unusual. I assume you're going to close off the street to traffic and stake the place out. What more can you do?'

'Right, well, you heard the man,' Bishop said, 'go and sort out a plan and pick and organise your teams. Whatever resources you need just ask and I'll get them for you.'

'I thought he said ...'

'Nevermind what he just said. My job's to oversee things and protect your back. And that's what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to give you the time and space to be getting on with things, and while you organise and run that stake out, I'm going to be working out contingency plans for the press. If he does manage to kill someone on O'Connell Street, or if O'Connell Street is a bluff and he kills elsewhere, then the media are going to go crazy. The whole world is watching us, Colm. This isn't about spin, it's about protecting ourselves from criticism and any fall-out. And that needs a careful strategy.'

'So you just want me to get on with it then?'

'Yes. And since you've only got four-and-a-half hours, I suggest you make a start.'

'And do you want to see the final plan?' McEvoy asked with a hint of facetiousness.

'Do I need to? As the AC says, it's just a large stakeout.'

McEvoy headed for the door, his shoulders slumped. Talk about being set up as the fall guy. If anything went wrong and they didn't catch The Raven, he'd be hung out to dry. The AC and Bishop would squirm and squeal and they'd make sure that anybody except themselves were held responsible. But there was no one he could delegate responsibility to. The buck stopped with him. He jammed his plastic cigarette in his mouth and descended the stairs. Feck the cigarette, he felt like a stiff whisky.

Everyone's head in the room swivelled to watch him enter, tracking him as he walked to the front, trying to read his mind.

He turned and faced them, his brow creased in worry lines. 'Sorry about the delay, there's been a change of plan. Can the crime scene people leave please, with the exception of Michael. We'll finish the meeting at another time.'

His audience looked at each other and back at him. Reluctantly the crime scene managers started to gather themselves and their notes.

'Come on, we're on a clock here; if you could make your way out.' He'd have liked to have requested that Deegan join them, but it would only cause hassle. Plus there would be plenty of people around to keep an eye on him.

Once those requested had left, McEvoy sat on the edge of a desk. 'Before I start, I want to make it clear that everything I'm about to tell you is confidential. You will not divulge it to anyone including your families or anyone else. Understand? That instruction comes from the highest level.'

Kathy Jacobs, Barney Plunkett, Jenny Flanagan, Johnny Cronin, Charlie Deegan, Jim Whelan and Michael Foster shared glances and nodded their assent.

'Good. There's going to be enough to worry about without the rumour mill working its way around the city. The note out at Oughterard stated where the last murder's going to happen. After a lot of fannying about we've decided to try and catch him at the scene. The danger is that he still manages to kill his last victim before we manage to capture him. That's a risk we're going to have to take. If we shut down the whole area, he's just going to kill someone else, elsewhere. The main thing is to make sure we catch the sick bastard. Everyone follow so far?'

'Where's he planning to strike?' Plunkett asked.

'I'm getting to that. I'm just making sure you understand why you can't tell your families. They might be planning to go to where he's planning to commit the final murder. If you warn them off, then they'll warn off their friends, and so on. We'll have a place either totally deserted or full of vigilantes and press. And we can't afford to let that happen. Is that clear?'

He paused, his eyes travelling across their faces, making them know how important the issue was.

'The note says he intends to murder someone at the spire on O'Connell Street sometime tomorrow.'

'Jesus Christ,' Plunkett muttered.

'That gives us a little over four hours to try and plan things and get ourselves in place. We've no idea when he might try and carry it out could be the early hours, late tomorrow night or anytime in between. My suggestion is we head down there now and scope the place out; work out where to set up camera surveillance and how to try and patrol the area. We have permission to close the street to traffic, but not to pedestrians.

'We also need to determine how many personnel we're going to need and whether we want an armed response unit involved. All personnel involved will need to be experienced and to be vouched for by yourselves. At this stage, I'm not convinced by armed personnel, especially as it might be busy with shoppers. I think we have them waiting in reserve in case he takes people hostage. Any questions?'

'Do we have any idea who the intended victim is?' Cronin asked.

'No. Some of the victims have been linked to Brady, others haven't. He could just pick someone at random.'

'How about how he intends to kill them?' Flanagan asked.

'Again, nothing. All the note says is the date and latitude and longitude of where he'll strike. My gut feeling is that it's going to be up close given how he's killed so far.'

'And he'll want to try and get away,' Jacobs added. 'This is his final challenge to kill where and when he's expected to and to then get clean away. It'll be carefully planned and likely to be very quick. Maybe a single stab of a knife to a heart and then hurry away before it's clear what's happening.'

'Hopefully we can identify and apprehend him before anything like that happens,' McEvoy continued. 'If it does, Michael, I want you and your team nearby to seal off the crime scene and collect evidence before it's destroyed. You'll also need to organise a standby medical team. Anyone else?' McEvoy asked.

The room stayed silent, each officer mulling over the task ahead.

'Right, okay then, let's get ourselves down to O'Connell Street. We'll leave in dribs and drabs rather than a convoy. I don't want the press following us down there. When you get there have a good scout around, familiarise yourself with the area, and try and put yourself in his shoes. How would you get in and out? And how should we go about organising the stakeout? We'll meet back here by 9.30 at the latest. Barney, I want you to come with me and Dr Jacobs.'

Plunkett was driving, McEvoy in the passenger seat, Jacobs in the back.

'We're going to have to split this into teams to make it manageable,' McEvoy said. 'Each team can do a block of four hours on duty, four hours' rest. I'll take charge of one team, I want you to take the other,' he said to Plunkett.

'Are you sure you don't want Jim Whelan to do it?' Plunkett replied cautiously.

'No. You've been with this from the start and ...' McEvoy stopped.

'And what?'

'And nothing.' Wanting to say that he didn't think Whelan was the right person for the job; that it needed someone with a bit more dynamism and communication skills. 'I'll take Charlie Deegan and Johnny Cronin. You take Whelan and Flanagan. His experience will counter her greenness.'

'Okay.'

'Good.' He turned in his seat to look back at Jacobs. 'Kathy, we're going to need you to tell us what to look for, what signs might help us identify him before he strikes.'

'I'll do my best, but I can't make any promises. I still need to go through the full case files to get a better sense of him.'

'I understand that, but you must have some ideas?'

'Well, for a start, I think he'll probably show all the usual signs of stress he'll be tense, fidgety, his eyes darting about trying to see whether he's been spotted, clasping and unclasping his hands, repeating things such as checking the route he'll use multiple times. He'll be doing his best to avoid some of those, but I doubt he'll be able to suppress them all as he'll be slightly hyper with the adrenaline, pumped up with excitement and fear.'

McEvoy nodded in agreement. 'How about the victim? Any ideas as to who he might go for?'

'My guess is they'll be on their own and probably quite vulnerable. Maybe a child or someone elderly. Someone who he doesn't think will have the wits or be quick enough to deal with him. Perhaps someone with their hands full of shopping?'

'And how about the method of killing?' Plunkett asked, glancing up into the mirror.

'I don't know. I think Superintendent McEvoy's right that it'll be up close. I don't think, for example, that he'll try and shoot someone from a distance. He wants to be next to them to see and hear and smell them. And, as I've said, it'll be quick. With the exception of Laura, every one of the murders was over before the victim knew what was happening. This will almost certainly be the same. He doesn't want to give them time to react.

'As for method, I don't know. So far he's tried to vary it the sword, suffocation, strangling, burning, slitting, attempted drowning. He might try something else, or he might want you to think that and use something he's used before. Given the pressure he'll be under he might well go for something he knows works like stabbing. I might be able to tell you more once I've been through the files.'

They continued on in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

He was sitting on the edge of the bath, spraying her naked body with warm water from the shower head, cleansing her wounds. The smell in the bathroom was terrible, despite his attempts to wash the faeces away from under her. Rivulets of pale red water trickled down the plughole. He ignored the sprays of blood on the bathroom tiles and shower curtain.

She had her eyes closed, refusing to look at him. Her face was drawn, her skin pale and tight on her skull. She didn't look as if she would last much longer; dying of dehydration, loss of blood, and lacking a will to live. Her early wounds had scabbed over; dry, dark lines criss-crossing her torso, arms and legs, cross-cut with new wounds, the blood freshly congealing.

'It'll be over tomorrow,' he whispered. 'One more death and the book will be complete.' He turned the shower off and watched the remaining spray congregate into droplets and slide off the body to the white plastic below. 'Our fame will be assured. I'll be known as a criminal mastermind, you a tragic victim. You will be immortal. As famous as Elizabeth Short or Annie Chapman or JonBenet Ramsey,' he said referring to the actress better known as The Black Dahlia, Jack the Ripper's second victim, and the six-year-old beauty queen killed in strange

circumstances.

'You will have suffered, but you will live forever. Everyone will know your name; your life.'

He stroked her hair gently.

She tried to pull her head away and settled for turning her face towards the tiled wall.

'That's my gift to you,' he said, caressing her cheek. 'Im-mortality.'

McEvoy stood at the three metre wide base of the steel spire and looked up towards where it tapered to a thin point 120 metres above. It had been erected in 2003 to replace Nelson's Pillar blown up in 1966 by the IRA. At the time McEvoy had thought it a tremendous waste of money it cost a fortune, you couldn't go up it, and it was boring; just a bloody big spike rising into the sky. His opinion hadn't changed with time. He lowered his face and looked around at the street-lamp lit scene, dragging the smoke from his cigarette deep into his lungs.

The spire was positioned in the middle of a crossroads, standing on a strip of pavement that separated the double lanes of O'Connell Street, one of the widest thoroughfares in Europe, 50 metres in width. Off to one side was Earl Street, a short pedestrian area leading onto Talbot Street that led down past the bargain basement shops to Connolly Station. Opposite was Henry Street full of high street, brand name shops. On the corner of Henry Street was the GPO the general post office a long, squat, stern-looking building with a grand central portico of six, wide classical Ionic columns, still pockmarked with bullet holes from the 1916 rising. On top of the portico, looking down onto the street, were the three statues of Mercury, Hibernia and Fidelity.

McEvoy set off on a circuit, walking to the north corner of Henry Street, then alongside the drab, four-storey shop fronts, the dark brown portico of the National Irish Bank, up as far as McDonalds, still doing a brisk trade to gangs of teenagers and bewildered-looking tourists, then across to the central reservation again. Standing next to a giant statue of a running hare set on a wide plinth, part of a temporary exhibition of Barry Flanagan's sculptures running the length of O'Connell Street, he looked back toward the spire through some thin trees just gaining their new leaves.

The area was still relatively busy. Buses and taxis trundling their way up both sides of the reservation, office workers heading home after a few Friday night drinks, early revellers disgorging from buses and traversing between bars, tourists fresh in on weekend city breaks wandering aimlessly seeking the sights and the craic, and a handful of plain clothes guards trying to get a sense of the space.

He weaved his way through the traffic to O'Brien's sandwich shop and headed back towards Earl Street, pausing to look down its length, past the entrances to Boyers' and Cleary's department stores to the smaller shops beyond, and then right at the spire blocking the route to Henry Street, people waiting at the traffic lights to cross, a timer counting down the seconds until the lights would change. It reached zero and the pedestrians surged forward, across onto the central reservation, streaming either side of the spire, heading for the far side.

He continued down O'Connell Street, past Abrakebabra, the smell of cooking meat and fries wafting out onto the pavement reminding him that he'd once again barely eaten all day, the saucy underwear in Ann Summers' window display, to the imposing frontage of Cleary's, mimicking the GPO opposite with 12 flat columns along its length, a large black and gold clock hanging above the entrance. Restrained neoclassical style buildings, their fronts a mix of limestone, granite, red brick and Portland stone, their roofs capped with copper, stretched down the rest of the street to the Liffey. He crossed the road back to the central reservation at the statue of radical labour leader, Jim Larkin, his hands held aloft, behind him the spire rising up through them. He drew to a stop and looked at the way he had come and then across to the GPO.

Barney Plunkett and Kathy Jacobs joined him.

'So what do you think?' Plunkett asked.

'I think it's going to be bloody difficult. It's a huge space. Even if we created a box 20 or 30 metres either side of the spire, the street must still be 50 or 60 metres wide. That's means over 2,000 square metres to keep an eye on; almost the size of a football pitch. That size of space filled with hundreds of shoppers, tourists and traffic is going to be almost impossible to police.'

'But we can shut the street down for traffic?'

'Yeah, but there has to be an excuse and I doubt we'll manage to get the diggers in before dawn. Even with just pedestrians it's going to be difficult.'

'Maybe we could use the road works as a way of channelling them, limiting the space they can use?'

'Yeah, it's a possibility alright, but then we might end up funnelling them together in such a way that we can't see what's happening they're too closely packed. If that happens, the danger is we'll lose him in the crowd.' He shook his head, lit another cigarette and blew out the smoke. 'I think we're fucked.'

'Even if he does manage to kill someone, if we've got an outer cordon we should be able to pick him up,' Plunkett said, trying to remain optimistic.

'Well, hopefully, we can grab him before he has chance to kill,' McEvoy said without conviction, rubbing his face, exhausted. His left hand had started to shake again. He tried to still it, but it wouldn't respond to instruction. All of his muscles felt tight, aching with tiredness and stress. He tried to roll his shoulders to ease the pressure thinking that if someone was to tap him with their knuckle he would probably sound a middle C.

'Hello?'

'Caroline, it's Colm. Is everything alright?'

'It's better than it was. They've been moved back from the front of the house and most of them have given up there's just one or two left,' she said referring to the journalists that had been stationed outside his house all day. 'When are you coming home?'

'Well, as you've probably guessed, that's why I'm ringing. I'm not going to make it back this evening. In fact, I'm not sure when I'll be back. It might be late tomorrow evening or the day after.'

'You've tracked him down?'

'I'd like to say yes, but it's not that simple. He's going to try and kill his last victim tomorrow. It might be our last chance to catch him before he goes to ground and disappears. We're going to work on through tonight and see if we can crack things open.'

'You need to get some sleep, Colm,' Caroline warned. 'You look like the walking dead.'

'I'll sleep when all this is over,' he replied, not wanting to argue. 'Is Gemma there?'